One of the most prominent contemporary black American poets, Haki R. Madhubuti was born Don L. Lee in Little Rock, Arkansas, and reared in the "black bottom" of Detroit, Michigan. Madhubuti's father, James Lee, deserted the family when the boy was very young. His mother, Maxine Graves Lee, became an alcoholic and died when Madhubuti was only sixteen. His fragmented family life, reflected by autobiographical elements in his early poetry, forced the young man into the realities of the working world at an early age. Supplementing the income from his two paper routes, young Madhubuti had a predawn job cleaning up a neighborhood bar.

Madhubuti attended Dunbar Vocational High School in Chicago. He received his associate's degree from Chicago City College in 1966, and he attended Roosevelt University in Chicago (1966 to 1967) and the University of Iowa, where he earned the Masters in Fine Arts in 1984. He served in the...